By PETE BANDA
Special to the NEWS
The idea for La Posada Providencia was created back in 1985 when Pope John Paul II made a plea for his religious community to better assists immigrants and asylum seekers. Four years later, La Posada welcomed its first person to the shelter and only continued to grow from there eventually seeing over 11,000 people pass through their doors.
After several moves, in 1995, La Posada settled into its permanent location in San Benito. With time, La Posada cultivated a network of community collaborators consisting of social services agencies, churches and volunteer groups. Those connections have led to a historical partnership with the Mennonite Disaster Services that will transform everything about their current compound.
Leaders of La Posada held an official groundbreaking ceremony for three new buildings that will more than double their bed space and add new office space to the growing facility.
According to La Posada Board President Jan Demro, The Mennonite Disaster Services have agreed to donate all of the labor force as they consider the situation on the border to be a humanitarian disaster. In addition to their help in the actual construction, which started just two days after the groundbreaking ceremony, the Pennsylvania-based volunteer group also agreed to cover any additional costs that La Posada would endure.
“Typically (the Mennonite services) deal with natural disasters like building houses after a hurricane or something,” said Demro. “It just so happened that they were looking for a project on the border at the same time that we were looking for a way to create these new buildings.”
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